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Sep 10 how to wake up in the morning

Open your eyes. Register that it is bright and you’re not ready. Drink a glass of water. Brush your teeth.

This is how to get up in the morning.

Remember that new mercies were promised every morning, and if mercies are given, mercies can be received. They’re yours for the taking.

When your heart feels dead to the day and you’re not sure where your hope went, write a list of every thing for which you are thankful. Keep writing. Write thing after thing, person after person, blessing after blessing until you start to believe you are thankful. Let it paint a picture for you of the sturdy structure of faithfulness God has constructed around your life.

Walk quietly through your house, hardwood floors smooth underfoot and nothing but the sound of your own movement filling the space. Remember your own holiness. Remember that you are never alone and the great crowd of witnesses surrounds you at all time — cheering endlessly, even when you are quiet and still — even when defeat all but consumes you.

Measure the coffee beans, watching numbers slowly tick up on a scale. Pour the beans, grind the beans, start the kettle for boiling water.

Wait.

Lean on the sturdy granite counter and notice how beautiful it is, how lovely the light coming in from the window and the perfect, gentle elegance of a singular eucalyptus branch reaching over the smooth white and gray surface. Breathe, for just a moment.

Reach back in your mind to the time when all was on fire, when you were convinced that life would never be the same from this moment, and you — forever changed. With everything you have reach back to that time, grab it strong with both hands and pull it forward into this moment: quiet, still, slow. The victory never left, you haven't lost it. Look at it and remember: this is who you are and there is nothing the day could bring or take away that will change the multitudes inside you.

Turn your face to the sunshine, darling — coming through the window, steady. There is no place He does not see you, no toil in which you will not see a second set of divine hands getting messy in the dirt beside you. You do not have to change your life — you only need to rise, to wake up, and approach this day in defiance of the lies that would keep you hiding in bed.